“Are you ready to depart then, Captain Becker?” Baron Amadahy asked Gideon on his penultimate day in service to the Kingdom of Oklahoma. They were meeting in the Foreign Minister’s opulent office, easily as posh as any in England, though some of the decorations might have raised an eyebrow in London. But his ship’s recent heroism had earned Gideon the privilege of meeting with the third most powerful man in the Prairie Realm in his private office. Tomorrow he would go aloft from the Tillassa Yard one last time, his service ending the moment he crossed the border into the province of Lafayette, in the Empire of Louisiana.

He had chosen that route to protect the Louisianan locomotive that would haul fifty cars through the Empire’s northern frontier, through the provincial capital of Petite Roche. From there the cars would be loaded aboard barges and floated the rest of the way south to the Lousianan capitol at the mouth of the Mississippi. The shipment was of especial import to Gideon, as fifteen of the fifty large steel canisters of compressed Helium belonged to him, not to mention sundry baggage of his crew that could better travel by ship to Europe than on the Victrix. That provided him a great interest in the locomotive arriving at Petite Roche intact – that is, safe from the various Negro bandits, renegade Reds, gangs of Louisianan outlaws and opportunistic Atlan soldiers who might consider attacking it.

Air Captain Gideon Becker watched the skirmish line of airships bearing the enemy’s colors – in this case, the red, gold and green of the Atlan Empire – bearing down on his position with a mixture of dread and excitement. He swung the periscope across the southern horizon and counted . . . five, no six ships. He noted with relief that they were not the three large Prussian-built stratodestroyers that the bloody Atlans had purchased recently, according to the Kingdom’s wily intelligence network, but rather the usual native-constructed patrol craft, a mere eighty meters long and painted a distinctive scarlet. They were far more primitive than the European-constructed airships in his squadron, more like the quaint first real airships from the 1870s. But there were six of them, and there were only three ships left in his squadron, including his own converted caravel, the Victrix. He hoped that today she’d live up to her name.

The next several days were busy for Edward, but he found he enjoyed the direction in scope and purpose that thieving on behalf of another provided. Lady Trey had given him three hundred pounds in “operating capital”, as she had put it, to finance his expedition to Paris, and he had pilfered another three hundred in miscellaneous valuables on his way out of Tudley House. Being conservative in nature, Edward husbanded his resources carefully, electing to take passage on a barge crossing the Channel, rather than a more expensive — and better documented — ferry or airship. Once in English Calais, he chose to travel by train in favor of a carriage ride, both for expediency and comfort.

Of course Edward was no stranger to the City of Lights, having been a frequent visitor immediately after graduation, when he had appended his fortunes to the coattails of his more affluent friends who made Paris their alternate home. Nearly every aristocratic family in England had a flat, a home or an estate in proximity to Paris, and Edward had spent three months gently visiting his schoolmates, one after another, never staying long enough to be considered a burden.

He had “worked” in the city a few times before, revisiting those same homes under the pretense of renewing acquaintanceships and then re-revisiting them during the dark of night in order to liberate them of their valuables. They were no more difficult to loot than English estates and, he had to admit, their wine cellars were as alluring as their treasuries.

The biggest problem with “working” too long in Paris was not the possibility of being apprehended en flagarente delecto by the Parisian constabulary — it was in crossing the powerful Parisian demimonde — the infamous underworld.

Edward had never had mixed feelings about anything so strongly in his life as he did concerning the prospect of returning to Tudley House. He had not only been “made”, as his Uncle Pete would have said in underworld jargon, but his “mark” had his real name – and knew what he was about. It was scant comfort that Lady Trey could not identify him from a proper police line-up. He knew with certainty she would be able to finger him the moment he opened his mouth. He had been lucky, he knew, to escape at all – much less after such a pleasant and unexpected sexual encounter. To return was folly of the highest sort, the kind of misadventure only gullible fools would indulge in and seasoned professionals would shun. As he paced his small room in the village inn the next afternoon, he knew going back to Tudley House was the quickest route to ending his professional career – not to mention his liberty – before he had truly hit his stride. Best to catch the next train back to the city, or perhaps the Northlands, or even deplete his meager savings for the first airship headed to a foreign land.